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Stephen Daldry's latest is the very definition of manipulative Oscar bait.

By R.L. Shaffer

I'll admit, I was reluctant to watch The Reader this awards season. Embittered by its Academy Award nomination over The Dark Knight, I wanted nothing to do with the film. Mounting hatred from other critics I respected made me stay away as well – not wanting the bad buzz to taint my experience of the film when I'd eventually get to see it. But now, the smoke has cleared. Slumdog went home happy and The Reader only snuck away with one arguably unjustified award (Kate Winslet's best-actress statue). My time to watch this wayward Oscar contender was now.

For those unaware (which is just about everyone, it seems), The Reader is a love story, set in post-Nazi Germany, about a 15-year-old boy who falls for a woman in her late 30s. The woman, Hanna Schmitz (Winslet), enjoys when the boy, Michael (David Kross), reads to her. It acts as a sort of poetic foreplay and relationship builder as she and Michael explore many of the world's most renowned and beloved books. Their fleeting relationship lasts only a summer, though, and comes as quickly as it arrived.

Years later, when Michael is in law school, he's taken to a Nazi trial revolving around six female guards who worked at Auschwitz and are responsible for the death of nearly 300 women and children. Among them is Michael's former lover, Hanna. Finally realizing she cannot read, which is why she made him read to her before, Michael feels helpless as she's convicted for writing the orders to kill the women and children.

Told through flashback and flash forwards, with Ralph Fiennes controlling the lead in the 1990s, The Reader tries to be a sweeping, poetic and haunting love story, but, at it's core, it's nothing more than manipulative Oscar-bait, crafted and designed to pull at our heartstrings using broken characters and controversial love.

It's almost ironic that this year saw two films about pedophilia. The first, Doubt, suggests that such affection is immoral and wrong, and should be forbidden, even if good is coming from it. But with this film, that's not the case. Here, the relationship between Winslet's Hanna and Kross' Michael is totally fine – controversial perhaps, but consenting nonetheless.

Such double standards are almost ironic. It's okay when it's a young boy and an adult woman, but God forbid an older man do the same to a younger man or woman. Shouldn't both be considered wrong, or at least somewhat crass? Granted, that's not really the point of The Reader, but still, it proves to be the film's most compelling social commentary particularly because there isn't a satisfying climax for the Nazi subplot.

Perhaps something was lost in the translation between Bernhard Schlink's source novel and this screenplay, from writer David Hare. The film doesn't seem to know what it wants to be. Instead, there are numerous scenes where characters discuss their thoughts, changing their opinions two or three times during their argument.

This becomes most distressing and perplexing during the finale, when Michael visits a Holocaust survivor. At first she seems repulsed by him, then sympathetic, then apathetic, then angry, then compassionate. It's a confusing range of emotion tattered by the film's lack of social metaphor. Instead, the film attempts to manipulate the audience with what emotion it thinks will work best with each passing second.

Then there's Winslet's Hanna. She's a confusing beast – emotional in one scene and vapid and confused in others, like a child. Some have suggested she was a victim of Asperger Syndrome, which perhaps explains her confusing habits and character traits. Or perhaps again director Daldry is simply connecting her with whatever fleeting emotion he feels would work to best convey Oscar-caliber performance. He certainly gives Winslet a few token Oscar traits – she's wearing makeup to make her look ugly, she's nude for most of the film and she can't read, a revelation that's almost embarrassing to watch in the film.

Frankly, Winslet's Hanna is the least of the performances in the film. German actor David Kross delivers the film's most emotionally complex role. It's easy to play an afraid, prideful ex-Nazi. It's harder to play her lover. In fact, Kross is so emotionally complex and layered, he makes Fienne's interpretation of Michael feel shallow and emotionless, almost mundane in comparison.

Usually with independent character dramas, you either love the film or hate it. There's rarely an in-between. But The Reader is the exception to the rule. There's a lot to like about the narrative. The film works in some ways but completely fails in others. Ultimately though, the picture feels designed to attract a certain audience, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing – it's just unfortunate that several genuinely great, groundbreaking films had to suffer while The Reader sought Oscar glory.